


Shook

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Todd comes to live with Jack at the age of 4.





	Shook

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I don’t own BB and make no money from this. Please heed the tags.

It looks like a castle. It’s big - bigger than his mom’s one bedroom apartment for sure, the one with clothes scattered everywhere and cigarette burns all over the carpet. 

“Well, you’re home,” his uncle announces in a voice that was matter of fact and calm, not at all the way he had been screaming and yelling all over the hospital, threatening to end everyone in a hundred different ways. 

Todd still doesn’t know what his uncle was so upset about after all. It was normal. That was the word they’d kept using, normal, nothing to worry about, “you can keep a secret, right Todd?”

“Well, home away from home,” Uncle Jack corrects. “Like an office, I guess. We work out of here. We’ll go back to the apartment after this.”

Todd finds himself disappointed. The place seems huge, warm, cluttered in a different way. It would be fun to live here. 

Men are lounging around everywhere, smoking and drinking, yelling at each other. There’s a pool table in the middle of the room, but no pool balls set up and no cues. Instead, one of the guys has used it to store a stack of magazines that he’s half-flipping through when Jack clears his throat to get everyone’s attention. 

“This is my nephew, Toddy. Whatever he needs, you give him. You hear me?”

A chorus of disinterested assent stems up around him, and Jack mutters something under his breath about how there’s no good help nowadays. 

Back behind the clubhouse, as he’s told it’s called, is a hole in the ground that water runs through. Todd crouches down and tries to peek down it, scootching forward to see how deep it goes. 

“Get back from there,” Jack says, pulling him back. “I better cover that up.” Todd stares at it, the water transfixing. It’s probably cold down there, not red-hot - 

But his mind doesn’t have time to finish the thought before Jack leads him back to the car and sets him in the backseat before buckling him in and locking the doors. 

“You just gotta forget about all that shit back at your mom’s, Toddy. Stick it in a box and forget about it. Ain’t no good in remembering nothing bad.”

When he gets back to the apartment, a two-bedroom in which one bedroom seems to be being used as storage for milk crates full of military helmets and the occasional, hastily hidden, bayonet. 

“I’ll fix it up for you. What color you want? Blue? Blue’s a good color, huh Toddy? Until then you can take mine and I’ll grab the couch. I’ll get you some toys or something. Trucks’d be good, maybe some army men. You’re gonna be just fine. Don’t you worry about anything. I’ve got some records if you wanna play something, or the radio. TV’s on the fritz.”

Todd walks over and fiddles with a knob on the radio. Prince’s voice fills the apartment with “Raspberry Beret.”

“That social worker gave me your clothes and all that. Let me know if there’s anything you want, or we can just toss it if you want. There’s a Target up the road.”

Todd looks through the brown paper bag and selects one item to keep - a tiny snow globe with Santa in the center. When he shakes it, the world fills with white.


End file.
